


Watch Duty

by AParticularlyLargeBear



Category: The Walking Dead: Road To Survival (Mobile Game)
Genre: Boredom, Gen, International Fanworks Day 2017, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 18:45:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9780284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AParticularlyLargeBear/pseuds/AParticularlyLargeBear
Summary: You would be surprised just how easy it is for the flesh-eating monsters to lose their lustre.





	

The worst part about surviving in a post-apocalyptic zombie nightmare was just how  _ boring  _ it was. Even standing watch lost any sense of meaning or excitement when you were doing it for the ten-millionth time. That, and spotting something hardly signalled a break in the tedium; no, that was the go ahead for the pants-wetting terror.

Walkers were dumb, slow, and clumsy, and they’d still kill you in the split-second where your guard was down. For added bonus fun times, the second you started to think that maybe, just maybe, you were safe, that  _ this  _ would be the place you could put down roots, other people would come along and kick the shit out of your sandcastle.

So, no, one year in, and Angela was never ever going to believe there wasn’t death around every corner. Boring, boring death.

Angela wasn’t sure if it’d be better or worse if there was anyone else in the group close to her own age. On the one hand, nobody treated her like a kid any more anyway (not that she’d been one at sixteen), and some of the stuff she’d been interested in back before just seemed  _ dumb  _ now. Grades? The labyrinthine social hierarchy of high school? As if.

On the other hand, it would have been nice for there to be someone who at least understood what all of that was like. Could maybe relate to the feeling of having any chance of growing up  _ normal  _ tossed out the window and then set on fire.

To be honest though, anything had to beat listening to Nathan and Lucia gush about plants for the sixteenth hour in a row.

Angela had been with Nathan for nine months now; the longest anyone had stuck with her since all of this started. He was a lean guy, had that sort of scruffy look going for him where his facial hair had progressed beyond stubble but was tamed just enough to not be a beard. Angela thought he might have been part asian—maybe Korean—since his tan was a little too dark for him to be white. Good dude, way more chill than anyone had any right to be after the end of the world. Angela had to admit, it’d crossed her mind more than once that ‘botanist’ was just specific enough a profession to be just vague enough to be suspicious. Still, pot grower or not, Nate had stuck with her when others had left, gone missing, or died.

Usually died.

Lucia, on the other hand, was one of the newbies. She’d only been with them for a couple of weeks; apparently her group had splintered in a leadership struggle, half going one way, half going the other. Lucia’s half hadn’t lasted too long. Besides her, a twitchy woman named Grace was the only survivor.

It hadn’t been comfortable watching Mac give the two of them the third degree. Angela knew that he was looking out for the group and all, but it left a sour taste to watch him pick over the pair’s story with a fine-toothed comb. They’d lost friends. Recently. The last thing anyone wanted was to relive those kinds of painful memories.

That was Mac though; gruff, tough, and shrewd. He didn’t screw around when it came to the safety of the group, although that had the double edged sword of it generally being his way or the highway. Even so, Mac had done a better job of keeping people alive than some of the so-called leaders Angela had ran across. What had happened to see her, Mac and Nathan out on the road again hadn’t been his fault.

Eventually, Mac decided that they could trust the newcomers, and they’d been welcomed into the group. The old adage of safety in numbers still held true, provided you could rely on the individuals that made up those numbers. Angela could tell that the jury was still out on both Lucia and Grace for exactly that reason. Being the last survivors of their group could mean that they were good, or it could mean that they were lucky. 

Luck never lasted long. There were a lot of ‘lucky’ walkers out wandering the streets.

For now, the two newbies were part of the team and hey, bonus, two extra pairs of eyes meant that everyone was getting more sleep. Trading watch shifts was utter shit with three. Woo for five hours max of rest.

Angela had just been getting used to safe nights again. Idiot. One fuck-up and the entire house of cards had come crashing down. So much for that pipe dream of a sanctuary, where they were protected from the walkers and could start rebuilding.

People were assholes. It’d been true before the end of the world and it was true after it; they were just more upfront about the assholery now.

Maybe she’d just had that little bit of cheer spirit still left in her. 

Her wristwatch made the softest of  _ beeps _ , and she sighed. One more look, she promised herself, just one.

Leaning forward, Angela pressed her cheek against the boards that had been nailed across the sitting-room window of her latest humble abode. A slender beam of moonlight was all that made it through the tightly-stacked wood, and there through the tiniest of cracks. She peered closer, setting her eye to it.

Out in the street, the walkers were still wandering across the tarmac in their aimless patrol. Not a herd any longer, but still too many. Couldn’t sneak past, couldn’t fight them. The waiting game it was. The dull dull dull waiting game.

Angela raised her middle finger, pushed it up against the boards. The walkers kept right on shambling.

Maybe it’d look better in the morning, maybe not.

So help her though, if she woke up to Nathan talking about his fucking bonsai again, she was gonna take her chances with the zombies.


End file.
